Willem van den Broecke
[5] He enjoyed the patronage of an elite international clientele of church institutions, Spanish nobility, princes of Protestant territories as well as patricians from Augsburg.
[9] In an active career spanning 20 years he developed an international network among the intellectual, artistic and ruling elite of his time.
He enjoyed the protection of the Spanish humanist Benito Arias Montano who resided temporarily in Antwerp and helped him with his contacts at the court.
[7] In 1571 the Duke of Alba commissioned a larger-than-life statue of himself to commemorate his reconquest of a large part of the Netherlands and in particular his defeat of the rebels at Jemgum in 1568.
The monument was executed by Willem van den Broecke and the Antwerp sculptor Jacob Jongheling after a program proposed by Arias Montanus, that was inspired by Piero Valeriano's Hieroglyphica of 1556.
The pursuit of glory in a ruler - and in particular, a subordinate thereof - was regarded as unbecoming under the Christian and classical principles upheld by the Spanish and Dutch courts.
[10] Through the Brussels court he also obtained in 1571 a commission to make a reja (stone enclosure or fence) for a monastery in Alba de Tormes.
[7] The artist was prosperous and bought in 1567 a plot of land on the Korte Vaartstraat in central Antwerp on which he built a house named De liefde ('Love').
A relief by his hand referred to as The Garden of Eden or Love (collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels) is believed to have been part of a chimney piece of his house called De Liefde ('Love'), built by the artist in Antwerp.
Another son Elias trained under his uncle Pieter in Mechelen and became a member of the Guild of St Luke of Antwerp in 1596 as a house painter.
His work found a following among workshops in Mechelen and Antwerp, which created reliefs borrowing iconographic motives from van den Broecke.
Van den Broecke was a varied sculptor who worked in many materials including alabaster, marble, sandstone, wax and terracotta.
Ten years later van den Broecke made the terracotta Anatomical study (Kunsthistorisches Museum), an écorché of a standing man.
[7] A similar figure executed in bronze has been attributed to van den Broecke (Christie's New York auction of 29 January 2014).
[7] It was part of a retable of van den Broecke that was originally commissioned in 1560 by Bartholomeus May and his wife Sibilla Rembold for the Dominican church in Augsburg.
A third series of seven alabaster reliefs made by Willem van den Broecke in the period 1568 to 1572 decorates the pulpit of Lübeck Cathedral.
[13] He also created a number of small statuettes for a discerning clientele that appreciated stylish compositions and a detailed execution in precious material.
[13] These works are characterized by their remarkable quality of execution, as the alabaster allows to precisely give form to the expressions of the faces, the folds of the clothes and the details of the accessories.
